COSAM News Articles 2020 March Geosciences Graduate Student Receives Award to Conduct Research at the Smithsonian

Geosciences Graduate Student Receives Award to Conduct Research at the Smithsonian

Published: 03/10/2020

By: Maria Gebhardt

“Receiving this award is very prestigious and provides Steph an awesome opportunity to pursue a dream of working in informal science spaces,” explained Dr. Karen McNeal, Molette Endowed Professor, associate professor in the Department of Geosciences.

Steph Courtney, a doctoral student, received an award from the Division of Graduate Education at the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Internship Program to conduct an internship with the Smithsonian, the world’s largest museum with more than 22 million visits in 2019.

“Steph will spend several weeks this summer in Washington D.C. to conduct an eye-tracking research project with climate related exhibits in the museums,” she added.

Steph focuses on explaining climate change-related information to people without scientific backgrounds, especially how people read and perceive graphs with important data. She tracks the visual movement of participants to provide additional insight about what indicators impacted their attention to improve communication.

Steph received a 2018 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for her project, Building better graphs for climate change communication: Evidence from eye-tracking.

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